Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad has a very interesting answer to the question "What is 'Hijab' and how should it affect us on an inner and outer level?"
Here it is:
Hijab is an ancient and, actually profound institution. Sometimes we assume that it's just about the surface and doesn't affect what is within. But of course what we do to our outward does have an impact on what we're like within, just as our inward state will be frequently discernible in terms of our body language, our behaviour, the kind of adab we have with others. So it is necessarily a profound institution.
What it is in its essence is a kind of cautious celebration. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'aala has created the world as an expression of His Beauty and His Goodness and He has placed the greatest and most miraculous concentration of beauty in His creation in the beauty of women.
And every culture has always known that. The artists and the poets have always celebrated that as the most extraordinary manifestation of beauty, of jamal, in Allah's creation.
Of course that is to be celebrated, but it's also the case that, in the Semitic tradition in particular, that not everybody has the right to gaze upon particularly intense concentrations of holiness.
So, in the ancient temple of sayyidina Sulaiman, in Jerusalem, The Holy of Holies was always covered by a veil. Similarly in the Catholic church, the sacrament will often be in a little tabarnacle, that is covered by a veil. And similarly, in the context of Islam, you could also say that the ka'abah is also veiled. The kiswah, the shroud of the kaabah, is in a sense the hijab of the most spectacular symbol of the Divine Absoluteness and Eternity that exists in this world.
So the hijab really is not a sign that something is unworthy or impure or dangerous. Rather it's an expression of the presence of holiness.
And that generally is the way in which Muslims have responded to the miracle of beauty.
So it's a way, as it were, of emphasizing the otherness, the apartness.
So, for instance, the word for women in Arabic is hareem but the word for the sanctuary in Mecca is the haram. It's a particular concept of an enclosure in which the sacred is manifested and displayed.
That's something hard for us to understand in our civilization because beauty is the thing that is the least understood and is most commercialized. So the face of the woman, even though nobody knows that this is the manifestation of the Divine Creative Power is a signpost, not an end to itself, is used and commercialized on the front cover of every magazine and every TV show. Because people still have that dim sense that here is something transcendent. In the beauty of women there is a sign of transcendence. Even the most dead-hearted atheist still is inspired by that.
Of course what they don't have is a way of setting that off and of sanctifying it and demonstrating that it has to be in its due context. We wouldn't feel right if the kaabah was unveiled. Certain sacred things are set around with barriers and liminal zones.
And so it is with the miracle of female beauty. That in the context of Islam our way of expressing reverence for it is to set it apart, to treat it with dignity to surround it... with actually quite severe regulations about deportment, modesty, self-effacement that are not there to deny her, but to acknowledge the sometimes unruly power that the disclosure of beauty in the public space can bring out.
Here it is:
Hijab is an ancient and, actually profound institution. Sometimes we assume that it's just about the surface and doesn't affect what is within. But of course what we do to our outward does have an impact on what we're like within, just as our inward state will be frequently discernible in terms of our body language, our behaviour, the kind of adab we have with others. So it is necessarily a profound institution.
What it is in its essence is a kind of cautious celebration. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'aala has created the world as an expression of His Beauty and His Goodness and He has placed the greatest and most miraculous concentration of beauty in His creation in the beauty of women.
And every culture has always known that. The artists and the poets have always celebrated that as the most extraordinary manifestation of beauty, of jamal, in Allah's creation.
Of course that is to be celebrated, but it's also the case that, in the Semitic tradition in particular, that not everybody has the right to gaze upon particularly intense concentrations of holiness.
So, in the ancient temple of sayyidina Sulaiman, in Jerusalem, The Holy of Holies was always covered by a veil. Similarly in the Catholic church, the sacrament will often be in a little tabarnacle, that is covered by a veil. And similarly, in the context of Islam, you could also say that the ka'abah is also veiled. The kiswah, the shroud of the kaabah, is in a sense the hijab of the most spectacular symbol of the Divine Absoluteness and Eternity that exists in this world.
So the hijab really is not a sign that something is unworthy or impure or dangerous. Rather it's an expression of the presence of holiness.
And that generally is the way in which Muslims have responded to the miracle of beauty.
So it's a way, as it were, of emphasizing the otherness, the apartness.
So, for instance, the word for women in Arabic is hareem but the word for the sanctuary in Mecca is the haram. It's a particular concept of an enclosure in which the sacred is manifested and displayed.
That's something hard for us to understand in our civilization because beauty is the thing that is the least understood and is most commercialized. So the face of the woman, even though nobody knows that this is the manifestation of the Divine Creative Power is a signpost, not an end to itself, is used and commercialized on the front cover of every magazine and every TV show. Because people still have that dim sense that here is something transcendent. In the beauty of women there is a sign of transcendence. Even the most dead-hearted atheist still is inspired by that.
Of course what they don't have is a way of setting that off and of sanctifying it and demonstrating that it has to be in its due context. We wouldn't feel right if the kaabah was unveiled. Certain sacred things are set around with barriers and liminal zones.
And so it is with the miracle of female beauty. That in the context of Islam our way of expressing reverence for it is to set it apart, to treat it with dignity to surround it... with actually quite severe regulations about deportment, modesty, self-effacement that are not there to deny her, but to acknowledge the sometimes unruly power that the disclosure of beauty in the public space can bring out.
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